Blog

The 40th annual summit meeting of the National Conference of State Legislatures was held in Minneapolis last week and lawmakers from 50 states and 26 countries fittingly honored one of NCSL's most important founders, Martin Olav Sabo.
Minnesotans know Sabo well. He served six impactful years as House Speaker in the 1970s and 28 distinguished years in Congress before retiring in 2006. Sabo was instrumental in m... Read More

(Note: Julie Gehrke is an Eagan resident and organizational coaching consultant for companies and non profits with expertise in conflict analysis. This blogpost was reprinted from her website Waiting4aStar2Fall. We think it resonates with our foundational belief that freedom AND equality, free enterprise AND democracy, liberty AND justice are not mutually exclusive values.)
Last week I attended a conference in Denv... Read More

Some high-profile journalists in the business press and mainstream media are talking about economic competitiveness in a way that suggests a paradigm shift may be underway.
In a Fortune magazine piece headlined “The U.S. Has the World’s Most Competitive Economy. So What?” Christopher Matthews cited academic experts who argue that by pursuing policies aimed only at increasing business profits, “government itself becomes a... Read More

AUSTIN, MN --It started with platters and bowls heaped with tasty fresh-cooked food _ a taco bar and a build-your-own-casserole table. Before long, as comfort levels rose, people began to hold each other’s babies, toddlers from South Sudan played with pre-schoolers from Central America, and grandmothers from continents apart began to share stories about their grandchildren.
And we began to feel the impact of “intentional social inte... Read More

Political humorist Mark Shields has said that a week can be a lifetime in politics and three months can be an eternity. How true for Obamacare and MNSure…
About two eternities (six months) ago, things were not looking good for the Affordable Care Act. The much decried audition of the www.healthcare.gov website emboldened opponents of the Affordable Care Act to declare victory, asserting that the website’s failure had sealed the fai... Read More